Meg Keene

A Diva is the female version of a hustler

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Meg Keene

A Diva is the female version of a hustler

About Meg

I'm Meg Keene. I'm the Founder and Editor-in-chief of A Practical Wedding, which started as a blogspot account on my kitchen table. APW has always been entirely self funded, and in nine years has become the top independently held wedding publication in the world, with twice the audience of Martha Stewart Weddings. Since it's inception. APW has helped more than thirty million couples plan their weddings, and has an audience of 1.3 million readers each month. While I spend most of my time these days as a CEO, I'm also an author, essayist and public speaker. I manage a staff of five out of the APW offices in East Oakland. I have two books creatively named A Practical Wedding and A Practical Wedding Planner. Both are consistent wedding bestsellers.

My own writing (of the non-book variety) spans personal essays about motherhood, feminism, entrepreneurship, and how I need to get off Pinterest already. My work has been referenced by publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR. It's also showed up on sites like Jezebel, Feministing, Refinery 29, and The Hairpin.

As an ex-theatre professional, public speaking and teaching is in my blood. I teach and speak on topics such as: being a woman and an entrepreneur, exactly what's wrong with the wedding industry, or how to build a publishing business in an evolving media landscape. I also occasionally get to work as a brand ambassador. If you'd like me to speak or work for your brand, please get in touch. During June, half of my work time is spent lots of interviews about how the wedding industry is (hopefully) changing, and I'd love to chat with you about it for your article, in June or any other month.

My husband and I grew up in a part of California known as the Inland Empire, that will always be home. I did almost a decade of time in and around Brooklyn. I now live and work in East Oakland, California with my husband and two small kids.

Publisher, A Practical Wedding (Website)

Wedding planning, minus the insanity, plus the marriage.

Publisher, A Practical Wedding (Website)

Wedding planning, minus the insanity, plus the marriage.

[A Practical Wedding] offers almost-engaged girlfriends, brides-to-be, and new wives something like what Sassy magazine, in its early-90s heyday, offered pre-teen girls terrified by Seventeen: a space where messy reality is normalized and confronted. Most of the site is devoted to real-world wedding stories, with budget advice and how-to’s included…. But the most striking posts delve into complicated and touchy issues like coping with toxic family relationships, planning second weddings, dealing with infertility—all things that are routinely airbrushed out of the glossier wedding media.

Author, A Practical Wedding, A Practical Wedding Planner (BookS)

Expect a big-hearted, broad-minded, super-smart low-down on the indispensable practicalities of getting married. Keene helps readers define expectations (your own and others’, as well as those of popular culture at large) and craft an individualized plan to achieve the authentic ones. Keene outlines options for how to prioritize, hack just about anything, shop smart and ask for help, and brings in pithy insights from experienced brides.

— Book Page (Top Pick, Lifestyles)

Keene’s wedding planning guide is a fresh, sane voice in a field of guides pushing big budget weddings…Keene’s book stands out as she empowers brides to find the elements of wedding planning that are meaningful to them and to let go of the rest without regrets or apology. Verdict: Recommended and required reading for all newly engaged couples. Public libraries would be wise to include this practical guide in their collections.

— Library Journal, 12/23/11

It’s like having a very cool older sister who went through all this already to help guide you on what is and what isn’t important. It doesn’t look down on weddings in general, and it doesn’t discount expensive weddings but also helps you create a rocking smaller affair. The book is written with humor, grace and perspective and never stops feeling like she is talking right to you. If you or someone you know is getting married soon I cannot tell you enough how much you need this book. And get one for the moms involved too. And the bridesmaids. Oh heck, let’s just say all of the wedding party and everybody attending should read it too.

— Not Martha

Keene offers couples of all faiths, ages, budgets and sexual orientation a wise and well-written hands-on guide for navigating the complexities of etiquette and cultural expectation. (Five Stars)

— Portland Book Review

Essayist

Essayist

Featured Essay

Moving (Forward)

This Saturday, I stood alone in our empty apartment. The movers and my husband had gone downstairs, and it was just me, the sunlight, and the dust. I stood in the apartment that was where we’d moved in together the first time (after moving across the country with everything we owned, combined for the first time, in a Ryder truck), where we’d come home the afternoon after getting engaged, where we’d woken up the day after our wedding. It was the apartment where we’d struggled with soul-sucking employment, law school, with unemployment, and where I’d written my first book. Echoing through my head was Edna St. Vincent Millay’s line, “… but the rain/ Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh/ Upon the glass and listen for reply.”

The ghosts coming out of those walls were painful, in a sometimes-you-don’t-realize-how-hard-it-was-till-it’s-over way.

Editor

Editor

Photo by Corey Torpie

My Life Is Good*

Despite the ubiquity of the Like button, the dominant culture of most major blogs and websites is overwhelmingly negative. They (we?) find a way to hate pretty much anything. In fact, finding people who hate the same things you do is often what makes the internet so amazing. The hot app at SXSW this year? Hater, an app that is all about the thumbs down button. While the founder claims it’s just a place to vent and to be authentic about the things you don’t like, I’m not sure why he thinks we need a separate app for that. It’s happening on every major social network already.Read the full article...

Photo by Rachel Miller

Feminism And The "New Domesticity"

The domestic arts are hot right now, or so the trend section of every major media outlet would have you believe. There have been numerous articles in the past year about young women’s newfound desire to take part in traditionally feminine activities like baking, gardening, and sewing. The authors’ discomfort with the idea of rich white women spending time in the kitchen or at home with their children is palpable; each article has a tone of skepticism at best, and clear disgust at worst. Pinterest is always mentioned, as are the subjects’ tattoos. The articles always suggest (either subtly or outright) that these activities and the women who enjoy them are anti-feminist.Read the full article...

Photo by Simone Gutkind, Archive Photo

Photo by Kelly Benvenuto

Do We Want Kids?

Before we moved, the toddler in the apartment next door cried a lot. Screamed, actually. From what I could hear through the wall, she wanted her daddy so bad that she was willing to burn through her entire range of emotions until her mom made it happen. I also learned that her mom’s preferred method of dealing with these tantrums was to raise her voice and yell SHUT! UP! I tried not to judge her parenting, but it was hard to hear a disembodied voice shouting at a little girl, even if I, too, desperately wished that she would stop crying. Read the full article...

Starting A New Adventure, Inching Toward a Dream

... the same quote that resonated with her stayed with me, too: “Figure out the life you want, and run hard at it.” But not, I don’t think, for the same reasons. For me, it was because my approach to dreams has been a little different. Like so: “Hazily articulate your goals and dreams, put them in a little box that you keep close by, tiptoe around it every once in a while, and as the weeks go by, peek under the lid a few times but not so much that you scare yourself off.” Catchy! Read the full article...